The World Cup this year created many psychics around the world making unbelievable correct predictions. If you think Germany’s ‘Octopus oracle’ is magical, China also had a faceless ‘superior being” that caused a sensation on the Internet with his predictions. Netizens calls him “Brother Future” or “King Future”.

On June 13, 12:04 pm, two days before the 2010 South Africa World Cup, a Baidu user named “X from the future” (X来自未来) posted this post titled “From the near future, come in if you want to know” on the Baidu Post Bar under the category of “2012 Bar.

He wrote:

I came from the near future, I know many people will think this is a joke, I am willing to first show everyone a little proof.

My proof is very simple, in the currently popular World Cup, the final will be played between the Netherlands and Spain, the Netherlands beat Spain 2:1, Sneijder and another bench player you would not guess the name scored. Hope my words will not travel to South Africa before the final, or else I worry about this affecting players’ mentality, and changes the history.

I will come back one month later, at that time you will believe everything I say about the future.

According to Baidu Wiki, at first this post was not noticed, but as the teams advances out of group matches and the tournament entered the knockout stage, especially when the Netherlands beat the popular 5 times champion Brazil, this post quickly attracted more attention and discussions. Comments flooded in, and many users registered their names to be “A from the future”, “B from the future”, “C from the future”…. in order to get attention. “X from the future” was also called “Brother Future” or “King Future” by the netizens. Up to now, this post was already reposted 8,014 times, and half of the posts in the “2010 Bar” were all discussions about the motive of “X from the future”, some gave explanations debunking him, but more people praised and supported him.

Up to July 9 2010, 2:41am, this post generated 245,267 comments, up to 20,000 clicks per second at one point. People called it the God Post. Because of the public attention of the World Cup, this post will likely become the most clicked post in the history of all forum posts. July 8, 2010 around noon, the post was growing in the rate of 5 pages per second (with comments) due to the crazy number of the comments flooded in, indeed a magical post. Up till now, Brother Future’s predictions are all correct, the final is going to be between the Netherllands and Spain. I am looking forward to July 12, the final results of the match between the Netherlands and Spain. The identity of “X form the future” is still to be confirmed, let’s wait and see.

What other predictions are those? Just that Spain and the Netherlands would play each other?

This isn’t real. Probably, it’s a recreation of a nifty scamming trick people used with the mail. You pick a popular event (Say, American Football in the US) and then you say a certain team will win all of their scheduled games. Then you mail that information to a group of people who live near each other.

Then you do it for every team.

At first, everyone thinks this is a joke, and when their team loses, they know it’s not true. But one of the teams will win all of their games (actually not always, but it happens) and the people who get that letter are very convinced it’s real. Because what are the chances of randomly guessing? (The chances are terrible, that’s why you don’t leave it to chance and mail hundreds of letters at a time)

Then the scammer asks the victims to use this “evidence” as proof of his future-seeing abilities, and to give him money. Some people do, because it’s nearly impossible to guess who will win the whole series (never thinking someone wouldn’t have to guess to know the right answer).

Those people get scammed, the scammer gets away, and everyone is so shocked that the scammer couldn’t tell the future after all.

“According to Baidu Wiki, at first this post was not noticed, but as the teams advance[d]…this post quickly attracted more attention and discussions.”

And which posts didn’t attract attention? The ones that were wrong. You can’t prove they’re there, because it’s the internet, and there’s too much to sift through. But they’re there. Even if it’s not within one group, if 1 million people make this kind of guess, and you’ve got a 1:1,000,000 chance, then chances are somebody *will* guess right.

People do win the lottery after all, it’s just people you know that never win.

Anyone who says they can read the future is lying, or isn’t a human being, or is an idiot. If you could tell the future, any sensible person would invest all of their money in the stock market and make billions of dollars. If the person is an insane trickster, then maybe they do have something to gain by telling people about their power.

Or it could be that whoever has this power to read the future doesn’t grasp the military implications of the power, and doesn’t realize that many people would be more than happy to kill owner of said power, in order to keep it from harming them or anyone else.

It’s good to report this, but it’ll be better to remember that this guy will be wrong. That’s my prediction.

Sneijder gets two yellow cards and can’t finish the game, then the final score is 1:0 with Spain wining. Except they have to stop the match briefly, because no one can think on account of how loud the horns are, and that’s why the referee calls the off-sides foul, which takes away the Neatherland’s only point. (Not by Sneijder)

I don’t really know who my intended audience is for this post. I’m sure most people already know this, but I don’t think it hurts to hear it again.

This one event doesn’t appear to be harmful to me either, but whenever you think something, it changes your brain chemistry. It’s often called “practice”. Practice playing the piano, then you’re be good at playing the piano. Not just on Wednesdays, not just in the evening. If you practice playing the piano and get really good, you’ll be really good all the time, you can’t choose when to be good and when not to. It’s every moment of the day, no matter whom you meet or what you do. (until you stop practicing of course).

Little tricky you may not know dude…accroding the fact in China, I guess, this “神帖”(God’s text) is for advertisement purpose…I mean…Maybe it’s a team’s work…They submit huge amount of prediction post, and finally, one or more hit the bullseye, then people gets scammed(also shocked), they can take take advantage of this to apply some advertise moves…

I’m always amazed how stupid an gullible so many people are. At every big event there are always thousands of “psychics” who predict all sorts of outcomes. Unfortunately there’ll always be more or less obscure parts of the media who are willing to report these predictions. Then ALL the friggin morons will go bananas when the natural statistically reasonable number of those fraudsters are correct while everyone conveniently will forget about all the idiots who weren’t.

Just guessing 10 football outcomes in a row (each set at odds 2, yes slightly low but I want to include the “mediums” who make informed predictions as well) amounts to only 1 in 1024. That’s about the same chance you’ll be in a small fender bender on any given day, or that somebody in your extended family will trip and break a bone, or that your boss calls you into his office and gives you an unexpected raise. These things occasionally happen you know, there is nothing weird or supernatural about beating the odds. We just tend to forget about all the times when the odds AREN’T beat in the process.

I don’t know why it is but women seem to be especially prone to gullibility when it comes to superstitions like religion, mediums and alternative “medicine”.

I forgot to mention that Squiddie “predicted” the winner only and got it’s fame during the knock out stage. It is of course MUCH easier to predict by chance when you don’t even have to figure in draws as most people who bet have to do.

Anyone who seriously believes that a random octopi is capable of predicting football scores is a god damn retard period.

Oh,, and by the way. I obviously have predicting powers of my own. I guessed all outcomes from the quarterfinals onwards correctly (apart from Holland-Brazil which I found too close to call) so if you want my advice on predicting the future send me 10.000 dollars and I’ll share what I know. Buzzkilling cynics might say that my correct guesswork comes from playing football since I was 4, a keen interest in the game and from watching 6-7 games a week and following football news but that would be plain wrong. I AM a true psychic now gimme your money!

“I don’t know why it is but women seem to be especially prone to gullibility when it comes to superstitions like religion, mediums and alternative “medicine”.”

Maybe that’s simply a person bias of yours. Or maybe men are prone to other kinds of gullibility–like assuming they’re brilliant and have a profound understanding of everything.

I haven’t studied traditional Chinese medicine, or alternative medicine myself, but at risk of misunderstanding what you actually mean by that term, I’ll say that it’s possible for plants and roots and what have you to act as medicine, even though the precise mechanisms are misunderstood by the people using them.

Take the Aloe Vera plant. You can just cut a leaf off and spread the goop on your sunburn and it instantly feels better. Sure it’s not magic, but it works like magic, and it’s been incorporated into sunburn gels in the United States.

If you’ve got something that works of a longer period of time than “instantly” it’s much harder to tell whether, how, and why it works. Getting a controlled environment out of someone’s life isn’t an easy task. I don’t research it or anything, but I’ve never heard of anyone doing double blind studies on traditional Chinese medicine. Presumably, because the western medical community assumes it won’t work because it doesn’t contain “rigor”.

And dismissing all forms of religion with such an offhanded comment strikes me as something an outsider would do. It’s a very meaningful thing for a lot of people. Maybe you don’t mean to say it has no value, but it comes off that way.

“That’s about the same chance you’ll be in a small fender bender on any given day, or that somebody in your extended family will trip and break a bone, or that your boss calls you into his office and gives you an unexpected raise.”

How exactly did you get these numbers? Does the chance of a fender bender change if you don’t drive at all? Does it change if you drive in China, as opposed to the US? Is it different for novice drivers as opposed to veterans?

What if you have no extended family, because (being Chinese perhaps) you are an only child and both of your parents are only children, but now you’re an adult and have been bereaved of them all?

What if your boss is known for giving out candy? Does this constitute a raise in yearly salary if he/she tells you you’ll now get a free candy bar on your birthday every year?

What if your boss never gives you a raise because he’s trying to run the company into the ground for convoluted insurance/business reasons? (Like in The Producers)

I then had a heavy lunch featuring a main course of Oil with a modest side of Channa and Bhatura. With a stomach mildly peeved at the lunchtime assault, I settled down to watch MSMT 2.0. The title said “Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara”, and I had some misgivings at that point. Why did Anantha call it MSMT 2.0 then? Nothing with the 2.0 suffix can be any good for anybody. Web 2.0 is a good example.